Bogdan Carlescu, VP of Marketing at Creatopy chats about the modern state of digital advertising in this catch-up with MarTechSeries:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Bogdan, tell us about yourself and more about your role at Creatopy…

Thank you for the opportunity to be part of the MarTech Series chat. I’ll start with a short story from a couple of months ago. To keep track of the gazillion passwords, I am using a password manager (and this is something I strongly recommend to everybody).

One morning, shortly after I joined Creatopy, I typed the master phrase and the password volt opened by running a short animation with a safe-box door animation. A colleague passing by noted with a smile: this is what happens when your VP of marketing comes from cybersecurity. And there is some truth to that, and I’m quite a rare breed of a cybersecurity professional turning head of marketing. This transition gave me a unique perspective among my peers, which is especially valuable in the tech environment. Since March 2022, I have been leading the marketing group at Creatopy. I fully immersed myself in the ad-tech industry, and I love it.

How are you seeing digital advertising and vertical advertising transform today? We’d love to hear some highlights from Creatopy’s latest study on this…

Trends come and go. The saying ‘the only constant is change’ applies perfectly to the digital land. But I am not afraid to say that short-form videos may represent the future of advertising. Only time will tell us which is the winning formula that will survive time (if there will be any). In one form or another, short-form videos are here to stay.

The secret is to be flexible, to adapt to all these changes, be an early adopter, or even better, be an innovator – create yourself the trends. Throw yourself out there, and you might get lucky. We are in an era of fighting over the short attention span of users. The most innovative will win. So we must consider this a challenge or an opportunity to be better as brands.

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When it comes to platforms like YouTube and Instagram that allow marketers to promote brand stories through shorts, what do you feel they can do better to optimize performance through these areas?

I think the secret is making native ads that don’t look ad-ish and salesy. People use these platforms to be entertained or educated. Or in Instagram’s case, they want to be in touch with their friends or family. For sure, nobody wants to be sold on these platforms aggressively.

So, to get the most out of these platforms and not disrupt users’ scrolling, ensure your creatives perfectly intertwine with the feed. Lean on trends, and test different hooks and different creative types. Don’t be afraid of failure, and be prepared to experiment a lot. Success will take work, but it will come eventually, and that is only after lots of testing.

How can marketers/advertisers diversify their marketing/ad initiatives through more such channels with the aim of creating more value and impact?

Every platform is unique. The same applies to brands. So each brand should focus on the most suitable platforms for their needs. They must meet their customers where they spend most of their time, be it on TikTok, Pinterest, or any other platform.

The next step is to provide the most value to your users, adapting your creatives to the platform you are advertising on. If on TikTok, what works better are spontaneous videos created with fewer efforts and resources, on Instagram, the requirements are exactly the opposite. Here you need more aesthetic and polished content. The idea is to meet your customers where they are and entertainingly provide value while considering each platform’s unique capabilities.

What are the five top-of-mind thoughts/tips you’d share with B2B marketers and B2B advertisers as they try to navigate complex/crowded marketing and digital ad environments?

First and foremost, it’s always to maintain sight of what is important because it is very easy to miss the forest for the trees in this environment. Everything we do as marketers should be deeply rooted in understanding who our audience is and their preferences regarding topics, channels, and media types. This is a 2-in-1 tip.

Second, keeping track of the industry’s evolution is crucial, but only bet your strategy on tested methods. I’m guiding my decisions on the “first we try, then we trust” principle. I follow a few podcasts to be up to date with the newest and shiniest. I can recommend the “growth marketing toolbox.”

Third, tools should not dictate strategy but the other way around. Powerful instruments can significantly enhance the end result of a good strategy, but they can also derail one.

And fourth, over tools and technologies, people matter the most, an important aspect, especially for leaders. Invest in tools but also in people.

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Some last thoughts on the future of martech-adtech and B2B marketing/advertising?

One of the things I closely follow is privacy in advertising. The martech-adtech stack evolved with a breath-taking speed, and user privacy lagged behind for a while. Now user awareness and privacy regulations are catching up. This changes things quite a bit, and marketers and advertisers must adapt to a more restrictive environment.

But in the end, this is a good thing because the customer’s needs and interests are at the core of marketing. I call this responsible marketing beyond the hype. The current macroeconomic environment, and the multiple crises combined, will definitely influence this dynamic, and hopefully, privacy will not take the back seat again.